MITT ROMNEY'S political day in the sun is over - for now. His feisty campaign for the U.S. Senate drew special interest here, because of his LDS and Utah connections. Since he was defeated on Tuesday by the legendary Ted Kennedy, it seems a good time to analyze why.
Initially, Romney was perceived by Massachusetts voters as a classy candidate - handsome, trim, articulate, charismatic and rich. When I interviewed him in March, he said his attractive wife, Ann, was his "most important asset."His image was a jarring contrast to the 62-year-old Kennedy, still infamous for Chappaquiddick and the first Kennedy to grow old and chubby in office.
Mike Barnicle, Boston Globe columnist, said even Kennedy's ears had put on weight. As for Romney, his idea of "a walk on the wild side means drinking a cherry Coke."
Predictably, Romney gave Kennedy his most vigorous race, and mostly they ran dead-even in the polls.
Then something strange happened. His "too perfect" image caused prospective voters to reconsider. The major symbol was the pervasive reaction to a Globe feature article, "Ann Romney's Sweetheart Deal."
Writer Jack Thomas borrowed from Rod Serling: "Welcome to the perfect town of Belmont and to this perfect home. Meet Mitt and Ann Romney, high school sweethearts still perfectly in love. Both intelligent. Both well-educated. Both millionaires. Their five sons are hale and handsome."
Even the family dog, said Thomas, wondered how he ended up in - "The Twilight Zone."
Ann and Mitt had only one argument - before they were married. He had never raised his voice to her - and if he did she would "dissolve into tears."
She reminisced about BYU, where they lived "on the edge" in a "$62 a month basement apartment with a cement floor. . . . Neither one of us had a job, because Mitt had enough of an investment from stock that we could sell off a little at a time."
Mitt's father, George, had given him the stock.
Ann seemed almost unaware of Boston's most notorious trouble spot - Roxbury.
The next day the public jumped all over her. Margery Eagen, columnist for the Boston Herald, raged about Ann and "her Ken-doll husband" and their practice of selling off stock "a little at a time."
Eagen knew "that Ann Romney has not a clue about my life, nor the lives of anybody I know." She dismissed her as "perky daughter of privilege with little understanding" of the world beyond her own.
From then on, Mitt's reputation as a friend of the rich escalated.
He also took heat for his position on abortion - pro-choice in the campaign but pro-life personally and religiously. Kennedy accused him of being "multiple choice," and some suspected he had changed his position because he knew he could never be elected in liberal Massachusetts unless he did.
Judy Dushku, a political science professor at Boston's Suffolk University, told me Romney failed to connect with women, a vital part of the Massachusetts electorate.
Romney may still have a bright future in politics, if only because he gave Kennedy such a scare.
In the end, it was David Nyhan, Globe political columnist, who best captured the Massachusetts mood: "Teddy is Teddy. He's old Ironsides - our durable, almost ageless broad-bottomed hulk of a venerable warship, whose thick oak planks have been dented but never penetrated by enemy cannonballs.
"He's Fenway Park, he's Ted Williams, he's the Citgo sign. He's Louisburg Square, Crane Beach, the Charles River and Castle Island; he's part of the landscape."